Tamil Nadu - Vellore   

Seminar focusses on AIDS awareness strategies

By Our Staff Reporter

VELLORE, JULY 23 . Facilitating communication between the children and parents is one of the specific strategies for Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) awareness being adopted by the Rural Unit for Health and Social Affairs (RUHSA), a community outreach unit of the Christian Medical College Hospital in K.V. Kuppam block.

According to Rajaratnam Abel, Head of the RUHSA Department of the CMC Hospital, RUHSA is implementing a programme to increase face-to-face communication between the children and their parents. Under the programme, children of higher classes in the schools are being taught how they can initiate and maintain communication with their parents. Simultaneously, at the community level, parents are being taught how they can communicate with their parents on sexual matters.

Bangkok conference

Speaking at a seminar organised at RUHSA on Monday, as a follow-up to the International AIDS Conference held at Bangkok from July 11 to 16, Dr. Abel said that another major intervention by RUHSA was to create an AIDS Cell in the panchayat-level Federation of Self-Help Groups.

Those representing the AIDS Cell are being trained to provide the education, care and support needed in the community to both prevent HIV/AIDS as well as to provide necessary community-based care to those with HIV/AIDS.

Lively debate

The seminar provoked a lively discussion among the participants in the light of and in reaction to some of the statements made at the International AIDS Conference held in Bangkok, which were downloaded from the Internet and culled from newspapers.

The participants included three medical doctors including two from the government, three teaching personnel, three project officers, one overseas public health student, 18 nursing personnel from RUHSA, 22 M.A. Social Work students from Tirupattur, six RUHSA non-medical personnel and two post-graduate students.

Over 50 per cent of the participants agreed that India was too slow in its AIDS Control Programme. More than half of did not agree that condoms were the best in HIV/AIDS control. More than 50 per cent also did not subscribe to the view that abstinence is not suitable for India.

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